Marketing a Consulting Business Through Social Media: Facebook ...

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I?ve been using Facebook both personally and professionally for about 5 years and I?ve seen a lot of changes in the social media platform ? some good, some bad. My attitude toward Facebook as a platform to develop your brand is a mixed bag. It largely depends on the type of consulting business you have that will determine if this is the best platform to market and promote your brand and how much time and energy you are willing invest in it.

Facebook?s features, functionality, and appearance change on regular basis much to the dismay of the users. Since the last time I wrote about Facebook there have been (to my knowledge) at least two major revisions to the platform. The latest is Timeline, which has changed both the functionality and appearance of Facebook fundamentally.

Before Timeline, we looked at each an every connection we had (whether that be a person or a business entity we ?Like?) through a sort of stream of consciousness in real time. Now, we get a view of both the present and the past with those we follow. The present, displayed through the real time stream of posts on what?s happening now through the Newsfeed (what you see after you log in) and then the Profile or Page where we see a historical progression of posts on up to the present day.

Let?s take a look at the major parts of Facebook and further examine how a consultant can leverage these areas of the social media platform to develop their brand.

Highlights of Facebook

As a consultant, you can view Facebook as having three major functions. How you use those functions will determine how you brand yourself as a consultant and a thoughtleader in your field.

Profile

The Profile is the basis for all activity on Facebook. In other words, it is your account. Without it, you won?t be able to do things like create Pages or participate in Groups.

Many consultants are solo practitioners and while it would be easy to think your potential clients would connect with you through your Profile by sending you friend requests, you want to make it easier for them to learn more about you without having to learn too much about you.

Pages can be developed around you as a personality or personal brand that followers can ?Like?. However, if you intend to keep your Profile strictly business (and some do), people can subscribe to your Profile without sending friend requests. They?ll get the benefit of your status updates without you having to connect with them on a one to one basis.

Pages

As mentioned earlier, in order to create a Page for your consulting business in Facebook, you must have a Profile. With this Facebook feature, you can create another entity where you connect with people and potential clients not as friends, but with those who have an expressed interest in your professional persona and your work through Facebook?s ?Like? feature.

Users of Facebook who find a Page belonging to a brand or business entity they wish to follow click a Like button to begin following their Page and receiving their status updates. Best of all, Facebook Pages get promotion and exposure within Facebook on the News Feed when they have been updated, and they offer more options and customization than Groups.

This is by far the best way to present your brand on Facebook. Countless number of businesses have done this and have found a lot of success using Pages as a means to engage followers and direct them to content they are producing that demonstrates their knowledge and expertise in their field.

Groups

Groups have evolved considerably over the years on Facebook, but I?ll be upfront and tell you they are not the best way to promote a consulting business on this platform. They are ideally meant for organizing people around an idea, concept, or cause. Groups are great for engaging followers in discussion, but they don?t quite get the exposure as Pages do on Facebook.

I would at the very least encourage some form of experimentation with Groups by taking your core service offering, present it as a topic, and see if you can generate some discussion around it. From there, you can direct people to similar content on your site and hopefully generate leads from it.

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Overall, you have to determine if your audience, the people you wish to connect and do business with, are on Facebook. Depending on your consulting business and services you offer, you may find that your potential clients are active in other social media platforms or not at all. Nevertheless, Facebook is a good social media platform to use to market and brand your consulting business. How much time an energy you wish to put in to it is up to you.

What best practices can you share that will be helpful to other readers who wish to use this social media platform to develop their brand? Please share your thoughts and ideas in the comments below and let?s get a discussion going around best practices a consultant can use on Facebook to develop and grow their brand.

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Related posts:

1. Consultants Leveraging Social Media ? Part 1: Facebook
2. Consultants Using Social Media to Market Their Business
3. Social Media Link Roundup ? December 2011
4. Most Popular Items Shared on Social Media in 2011
5. Using Social Media to Stay Connected With Consultant Base Camp

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